The killing of a harvester highlights Israel’s “war-like” attack on West Bank olive farmers

The killing of a 59-year-old woman who eyewitnesses said was shot in the back by an Israeli Defense Forces member as she was harvesting olives on her West Bank land on Thursday highlighted what a U.N. official described as a “war-like” event “Attack by Israeli soldiers and settlers in illegally occupied Palestinian territory.

Hanan Abu Salameh was working with relatives in her family’s olive grove in the village of Faqqua, east of Jenin in the northern West Bank, when IDF soldiers stationed on the nearby separation barrier along the Israeli border opened fire on her, Faris Abu Salameh. the son of the woman who was killed saidEye of the Middle East.

Abu Salameh, who saw his mother shot, said his family and other villagers were allowed by Israeli occupation authorities to harvest olives on their land if they stayed at least 100 meters (328 feet) from the wall.

“We were a lot further away from the wall,” he said. “Suddenly they started shooting indiscriminately. We started packing up to leave and moved away. My father waved his white hat in the air, hoping they would stop. They shot her in the back as we fled the shooting.”

The IDF announced Friday that it had suspended a deputy commander of the battalion in which the soldier who allegedly shot Abu Salameh served.

“The military police have opened an investigation into the incident,” the IDF said in a statement. “The force commander at the time of the incident has been suspended pending the outcome of the investigation.”

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said it had received reports that settlers had carried out 32 attacks on Palestinians and their property, including farms, this month alone. The agency also said about 600 olive trees – which take 10 years or more to mature – were destroyed, stolen or destroyed by Israeli settlers and colonists.

“It is honestly very worrying that these are not just attacks on people, but also attacks on their olive groves,” OCHA spokesman Jens Laerke said at a press conference in Geneva on Friday. “The olive harvest is an economic lifeline for tens of thousands of Palestinian families in the West Bank.”

According to the Palestinian Farmers’ Association, olives are the number one agricultural product in the West Bank. It is estimated that between a quarter and a third of the West Bank’s population works with olive trees and related products, including oil and soap. Israeli occupation forces have severely and systematically restricted Palestinians’ access to their own land, resulting in significant economic losses.

“Israeli forces have used lethal, war-like tactics in the West Bank, raising serious concerns about excessive use of force and exacerbating people’s humanitarian needs,” Laerke added.

Israeli attacks on olive farmers began on the first day of this year’s harvest season earlier this month, when dozens of masked settlers injured at least 11 Palestinians, including women and children. Settlers, including members of the violent extremist group Hilltop Youth, have also stolen land from Palestinians in the West Bank.

The United States and other nations have imposed sanctions on a handful of Israel’s most violent settlers following incidents including several deadly pogroms in which IDF troops protected and sometimes joined the attackers.

However, the US is also Israel’s main international supporter, providing the key Middle East ally with tens of billions of dollars in military aid and diplomatic cover, including vetoes of several UN Security Council ceasefire resolutions.

This is despite Israel being charged with genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for its conduct in a war of annihilation that has left more than 150,000 Palestinians dead, maimed or missing in Gaza and forcibly displaced and left millions more homeless, starving and sick.

According to the Palestinian Health Ministry in Ramallah, more than 750 Palestinians have been killed and thousands more injured by Israeli soldiers and settlers in the West Bank since last October. During the same period, more than 40 Israeli soldiers and civilians were killed by Palestinians who resisted what David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, called the “usurpation” of their land by Jewish colonizers in the 1930s.

“The West Bank is Palestinian land,” the California-based advocacy group Institute For Middle East Understanding (IMEU) said on social media on Friday. “Israeli soldiers have no legal right to be there, yet they have relentlessly invaded Palestinian cities, killing and expelling those who legally live there.”

More than 700,000 Israelis live in over 140 settlements in the occupied West Bank. Under international law, including the Fourth Geneva Convention, both Israel’s 57-year occupation of Palestine and its settlements are illegal. In July, the ICJ issued an opinion concluding that the Israeli occupation was an illegal form of apartheid that must be ended immediately.

“The Biden administration has a duty under U.S. and international law to stop arming Israel as it continues its violence in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon,” IMEU added. “Every weapon the US provides allows Israel to kill more civilians and prolong this devastation.”